Great Ocean Road

February 12-14

Jeeze, again, I feel so far behind in blogging.... I have several hours to kill before I hop on a bus so I thought I'd try to catch myself up. When I'm this far behind though, I may keep things short, at least so I can write down the most important highlights, and then possibly come back and add more details later.

I was picked up nice and early (6 am)... and boarded the Groovy Grape bus. The tour driver, Amber is fantastic, and is so knowledgeable about the surrounding areas. There were about 17-18 of us on this trip and I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and to be totally honest, was a bit surprised by the type of travel I was doing, but okay with it. For example, our meals... we stopped at a park for lunch, got out the plates, cutting boards, food, and all pitched in to cut things up to make ourselves wraps. I'm okay with embracing all these experiences because if it was always restaurant food, I think I'd get sick of that!

So we headed out of Melbourne and did Victoria's famous tourist drive and got to see some spectacular lookouts along the way.
We stopped in Torquay, close to Bell's beach, which is the Surfing capital of the world... this town is also home to Quiksilver and RipCurl, the surfing shops, and I was finally able to buy myself a few more Roxy flipflops for half price! Woo hoo.... gotta love a discount, as Australia is very expensive.

So this drive is amazing... I would say the highlight of today was definitely seeing the "12 Apostles." These apostles are famous rock formations in the water.... and there are only 8 remaining, as the water hitting them has caused 4 of them to fall. I ended up doing a helicopter tour of the area, and I'm really glad I chose to live in the moment and cough up $70 to do it.... well, well, worth it!

I think my most embarrassing part of my day, was asking this Russian lady on the trip to take my picture. I went to pose... and as I posed I fully farted. I was an unexpected slip and I was SO embarrassed. She right away heard it and was like, "it's okay, it happens to all of us!" Lord, that was a first for me. LOL

Day 2
Woke up really early and got to see the 12 Apostles one last time. Drove to a ton of lookouts today--London Bridge, through the "wheat" area of the country. Today I saw Wallaby's hopping across the road.... similar to the way we see skunks and raccoons, here, we see Kangaroo's and Wallaby's (which are smaller versions of Kangaroos).
Also got to go to the Aboriginal Cultural Center, where we learned about the Indigenous people of this area. The spot where we went to tonight to see the sunset was phenomenal and I ended up spending most of my time with Clare and Heather from Scotland. My only problem with them is that I could not understand them most of the time. I always thought they were speaking another language because they're accents were so heavy. I felt like a total moron half the time, as I had to keep saying "pardon" and they were always repeating themselves... but we got a good laugh out of it.

Day 3
Today we did a 3 hour hike of The Pinacle (the area) in the Granpians National Park... what a frickin' great hike! Got my heart beating today, that's for sure!
After that, we got to see MacKenzie falls, had lunch, and then a long drive to Adelaide. Overall, a great tour. Amber, the tour guide, may actually meet me in Thailand for a few weeks!